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I wrote this back in May and have posted it to a few arena's but ultimately it should reside here with the rest of my Trainer Talks posts:

So you created yourself a blog through a
hosted provider such as Blogger or WordPress and then it’s all like –
“Now what do I do?”.

We’ve all been there and as much as the
main focus seems to be on driving more traffic a lot of people forget
or even do not realise that there are a few more basics to blogging
than generating traffic. I have been asked this question a few times
so I put together what I consider to be the very basics to blogging in
the beginning:

1. The biggest thing you need to do is be patient
– patience is something that not a lot of people have but really when
you are building a steady base for your blog you need to have this.
Rome was not built in a day and your blog design, writing, audience
won’t be either.

2. Use proper language and grammar -
it really does not matter what your site niche is, if your site is
poorly punctuated, hard to read and difficult to digest then no one is
going to look any further than the first few lines. Take a few seconds
whenever you create a page or a post to ensure that everything is in
order and reads well. You will be forgiven for the odd mistake but a
post full of them means people will switch off.

3. Improve your blog -
this relates to your layout, the content. It takes a while for any
blogger to really settle into their blog and as you grow with it you
will find that you want to get more out of it and the only way to do
this is to experiment with your layout, experiment with your design.
Find what works for you, look at the gadgets and widgets out there and
play until you are happy. People may argue that your followers will
get fed up if you keep changing it but if your theme and name is the
same it won’t matter that you are improving your style, if anything it
will keep people intrigued.

4. Write consistently –
One thing that happens quite often is bloggers will have spurts of
writing and they will generate day after day, post after post and
publish them. What happens when things go quiet? writers block takes
hold? time doesn’t allow? well you end up letting your readers down,
they come back regularly and then discover that you’ve not posted for 3
weeks so they think you’ve abandoned your blog. Make a decision
about how often you want to post and within reason stick to it. Your
regular readers will discover your publishing habits and you will see
them return more regularly. On a plus side for all the writing spurts
there is the draft button, you can create a post, save it to draft and
publish it later.

5. Don’t fall into the Follow Me Follow You trick
– For anyone out there running around forums and posting “Follow Me
and I’ll Follow You” I think this is a complete waste of time for
traffic – it does what it says on the tin the ranking on Follow me/you
only really works for increasing the number of people who clicked
‘Follow you’ it doesn’t affect the SEO’s (Search Engine Optimisation)
unless there is registered activity and chances are they won’t return
to your site ever again. Joining in on other people’s events and
linking to each others blogs is a better way to direct traffic and will
be so much more productive for you than clicking on several hundred
follow buttons.

6. Build Relationships –
There are a number of forums out there in the blogsphere e.g. Blog
Frog, Blog Catalogue, Technoratti, and many many more, I have joined a
number of forums and although I have left half of them by the wayside I
have found the ones I am comfortable with and the ones where I enjoy
the interaction with other communities and bloggers. These forums
enable you to find out how to’s, advice, discuss comments, share posts
and interact in a positive way. You will also be able to build
successful networks of bloggers who in your time of blogging need prove
to be just as good as your BFF.

7. Comment Love – I am a
firm believer in comment love, but for anyone leaving a comment of ‘I
agree’, ‘I love this’ and ‘oh here’s my link’ etc. it is lovely to see
it but it doesn’t really push me to go look any further at that
person’s blog. People love comments, me I love them more than stats,
don’t be disheartened if you don’t have comments against posts,
sometimes it takes a while for people to get into your blog and start
leaving comments. I am a firm believer that if you leave comments,
there’s a strong chance you will get comments back. When you leave a
comment it’s better to leave a well thought out comment about the
subject matter. It doesn’t have to be an essay but a well constructed
response such as “I really like the view point you gave on ***** I have
been in this situation myself and actually wrote a post on it (then
it’s OK to leave your link) I would love to hear your thoughts on it”
gives you the perfect opportunity to start a discussion with a person
about their post and share something that you’ve written previously.

8. Don’t steal or borrow
– You might find yourself inspired by someone’s post, if you feel that
a point they makes backs up your post make sure when you write your
post you include a link to their post and then leave it in their
comments section. I can guarantee any blogger will love that you’ve
quoted or linked to them but they will not love it if they find out
you’ve nabbed their work and if they have copyright you can find
yourself in big big trouble.

9. Plug Ins and Widgets -
I see so many blogs that have nothing other than just the content and
for some it does work but I have a few plugins and widgets that I just
would not be without:

RSS Sign up – Allows people to bookmark your site so they can obtain updates and keep on track with your blog

Link Within – Enables me to display thumbnails of other posts relevant to the post being read.

Broken Links – scans my blog and tells me of any links that are not
working, this can be from links I have created or even links left by
people through the comment section

Akismet – Spam scanner, protects my blog from spammers and enables me to
delete all with one click of a button or if they happen to be real
(not very often) I can approve them

Comment Luv – once people leave comments on your blog, comment luv will
pick up their last post from their blog and automatically leave a link
to their site, It is great for generating links and therefore sending
off little radars to the SEO’s.

(I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible, a plugin is a
script(code) that is uploaded into the back end of your blog which will
give you additional functionality, a widget is usually the vehicle for
accessing or enabling that functionality to improve the appearance of
your blog most widgets are derived from a plugin but not all plugins
need a widget e.g. Commentluv is a plugin that once you activate will
work on your blog, there is no need to add a widget, this is the same
with Broken Links and Linked Within, etc).

Wherever you look in the Blogosphere
there will be people telling you to do this or don’t do that. At the
end of the day it’s your blog, you can pick and choose what you want to
do with it. Make the most of the design, layout and context and then
go out there and pull people into it. The rest will come in the
future, I have said this before, you will get out of it what you put
into it but if you are serious about building your blog then it
definitely is worth the time and energy to do the things listed above.

Trainer Talks was my first blog and it's always been on blogger but I have two other self hosted blogs: Almost There and Samuel Michaels Photography, I change the look and feel of my blogs in line with the growth of them and probably
will continue to do so in the future.

If you have a question feel free to ask,
if I can help I will. In the meantime happy blogging and don’t forget
to come back and check for updates.